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The Space Topic

rob666 said:
But I now want to hear your detailed explanation of the six types of quarks Matt, and precisely why it matters!
Prefer a bit of strangeness myself, obviously.
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If I’m remembering correctly, it had something to do with dictating the charges of the sub-atomic particles (protons, neutrons, and electrons). I remember a neutron had an up-down-down quark composition, which gave it a neutral charge, whilst a proton had an up-up-down quark composition, which gave it a positive charge.

Beyond that, I don’t really remember an awful lot… I remember there being a lot of terminology, but I can’t really remember much of what it actually meant. Like I said, I mostly remember Particle Physics as a load of strange-sounding terminology that resulted in dumbfounded giggles from anyone I tried to explain it to…

In hindsight, it really is a wonder that I managed to get an A in Physics given how poorly I can recall aspects of the course only 2 years later…

Steering things mildly back on topic, I don’t think we actually did relativity as a unit of our A Level, come to think of it. We did a big module on space, where we studied a lot of Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams and stuff to do with the Big Bang and the lifecycle of stars and such, but I think relativity was just something that our teacher gave us a brief introduction to one lesson for fun rather than something we properly covered in our A Level.

I still think that on paper, time dilation sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi film, even though I know very well that relativity is a real scientific concept… I just find the whole thing quite confusing and hard to comprehend!
 
DiogoJ42 said:
Starship is due to launch just after 1pm our time. Whatever happens, it should be spectacular!

Just about every Space youtuber has their own stream, but I'm tuned in to EDA (he's been going since 4am!) as his production values are better than Space X themselves.

From: https://www.youtube.com/live/ixZpBOxMopc?si=-BQec81MRpQOQ8Fz
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What a spectacular event that was, some of those views and the seamless transitions between stages was incredible! Seeing starship improve in each and every test has been a helluva journey. Only feels like yesterday that we saw starhopper jump across the Boca Chica base.
 
Just under a week ago, one of the most impressive space demos took place that I have ever seen.


From: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1798689697184764071


The amount of live coverage during the event and the images captured are remarkable.

From: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1798792222743122164

If your having a bad day, just remember the little flap that never gave up.

The booster soft landing on water is also crazy to watch, how they managed to get it landing so close to the camera is amazing, and is a good indicator for what they have planned next.

From: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1799458854067118450

The scary thing is, when they do test 5, the plan to land the booster on the ground and capture it back where it took off. If they pull that off first time, it will be remarkable.

Hopefully within the next two years the Artemis program will have people back on the moon, and who knows, within 5 years, we may have commercial craft capable of going to the moon and beyond.
 
Just caught up on it (needed a lie in). Incredible! An almost perfect catch (well, it was on fire, but that's standard for Starship at the moment).
Lovely big badaboom on the ship splashdown. Was not dissapointed.

And can we just take a moment to marvel at the incredible footage? Capturing it at all would have been impossible only a few years ago, but seeing it live‽ Things sure have moved on in the last 9 years since I posted this:
DiogoJ42 said:
[...]
And yet... Manned space exploration seems to have died. The ISS orbits so low you almost could hit it with a stick if you leant out the window of an airliner. And the only manned spacecraft still in service to ferry humans to and from it is Soyuz, which may be a tried and tested workhorse, but it's 50 years old for crying out loud!
The only project that seems to have any future potential for manned flight is the X-37B... but that's a US military project and highly classified. Doesn't sound like a peaceful exploration craft to me :(
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DanJB said:
I was shaking watching it live. Thought for sure it was going to crash into the tower at the end. Insane that they did it on the first try.
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Almost an anticlimax, really. I suspect they half wanted it to demolish the tower so they could build a proper flame trench like they're doing with tower two. 🤣
 
The Europa Clipper probe has just launched on a Falcon Heavy. Currently coasting in to a parking orbit, before headding off to Jupiter. Should get there in 2030.
..... Space really is big.
 
And that’s with the Falcon yeeting it into the void at 28,300 mph - the fastest any SpaceX rocket has gone to date!

They've had a pretty good 36 hours😎
 
All three F9 boosters were expended as well. They need every bit of ΔV they can get!
 
The reporting on the Europa mission by the mainstream media is utterly irritating. Whilst the chief aim of the mission is to study the moon and possibly (but not definitely) capture water samples, the BBC and other networks are claiming that this is some sort of hunt for alien life - as if it's not impressive enough to undertake such an ambitious mission unless you're expecting to find little green men round every corner of the solar system.
 
Surely all space probes are hunting for alien life? Even if it's not the primary mission, Europa is one of the best candidates for life in our system.
 
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Oh wow, two strings of starlink satellites going right overhead when walking the dog ten minutes ago, together with a crystal clear sky and stunning full moon.
Absolutely amazing, almost as good as the full red rainbow last month!

Watch the skies people.
And others.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
Surely all space probes are hunting for alien life? Even if it's not the primary mission, Europa is one of the best candidates for life in our system.
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Enceladus is perhaps greater in which you could easily fly through those plumes of water and detect life without having to land. Had Cassini been fitted with such a device on its boom arm to detect microscopic life then who knows, we might have been living in a timeline in which we would know that there is life out there.
 
The problem is that scientists define 'life' as a few strings of amino acids, whereas the media and general public are expecting Spock...
 
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